For some reason EA thought it was time to try and move away from action based racers to more of a simulation style like Gran Turismo and Forza. Their USP was that ‘Need For Speed: Shift’ was cross-platform unlike its rivals which were console exclusive.

Personally coming straight off the back of ‘Need For Speed: Undercover’, this next game in the series was a real “shift” in tone, pun intended. The hectic faced paced races I was completing a day earlier were replaced with slow meandering drives round a track which felt like navigating an elderly person round an icy path. The cutscenes didn’t help either, depicting cars roaring by generating excitement only for the early races to be slow and boring.

After a few hours of playing I thought “right I have seen enough of this game, now onto the next”. 3 hours later I was still playing. I was yet to discover the best part about this game…

Unlike previous entries, not only does Shift allow dirty tactics to beat opponents it actively encourages it. My cars were shaped in such a way that if I rear ended someone my car would act as a ramp and they would go over the top of me. I would also take great pleasure in flipping other cars onto their roofs during races. I would jump for joy as I threw my rivals in the air, especially the ones I had just lapped.

There are a handful of race types such as your standard lapped race, versus battles and drift matches. These will either be completed in your purchased cars or ones provided which is good as the game allows you to have a try of every type of car without purchasing it. I was not a fan of the drift races so was delighted when I realised I didn’t need to do any to complete the game as the other races gave me enough stars to progress to the World championship.

The soundtrack takes a backseat in this game as there is no music playing during races. This is it for the soundtrack paragraph.

I played this game to completion as it wasn’t that long and unlike ‘Undercover’ there is a clear sign of progression which helps you figure out how close you are to the championships. ‘Need For Speed: Shift’ was a good driving sim but in my opinion, EA should just stick the NFS franchise to what it does best, action driving games with epic soundtracks, car modifications and fun rather than something a little more serious like a driving simulator.

Fairly decent actually. Instead of trying to copy Gran Turismo the developers opted to replicate the sensation of being on the edge of control. The cockpit camera is incredible and quite frankly, the only way to play Shift because it genuinely enhances the experience. Unfortunately the handling doesn't feel all that good and most cars will require tuning to not oversteer horribly and even then every once in a while your car will either start jumping for no reason or behave unpredictably. My biggest issue with Shift stems from its use of the Driving Line. The game encourages always following the line, turning it off puts you at a big disadvantage and makes the already tail-happy vehicles even harder to control. It made me feel like I never actually got good at driving, but merely at following the displayed line.

It's a very challenging move for Need for Speed to make such a different type of racing game then they used to make. And I love what they did here, there is actually real challenge in this game, since the hard difficulty is really difficult in my opinion and I love that. The corner mastery (don't know if thats how it's called, I played the game in my own language, Dutch :P) mechanic is really cool and gave me extra motivation to drive as good as possible through the corners, instead of drifting through is and be a dirty driver like it normally is in a Need for Speed game.

Need for Speed Retrospective #13

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. After a change in developers, this small British team somehow ended up assembling a much more realized version of what ProStreet was going for two years prior. Everything looks and feels so vibrant here. Shift was the first racing game to repeatedly make me drive in cockpit view, just because it felt so luscious and visceral to use.

Many other reviews have criticised the handling in this entry, and rightfully so. If we assume that they went for a technical or simulation approach here, it's clearly a failure. I haven't driven a real car in over twelve years now and even I know this is not how cars behave. Shift's rather unique handling model took me a while to learn, but at least (and quite unlike the previous entry in the series) it's consistent and predictable once you have picked it up. There are limits to everything, though. I don't think any human being on earth ever felt in control of the drift events in this game.